We could never go back to how things were on the day before 9/11, but maybe I could go back to who I was.

I’m clinging to one last thought: pain is the harbinger of hope. You have to be alive to feel pain. If you are alive, then you have purpose. If you have purpose, then you have hope.

In total this journey will take five flights and fifty-five hours, but in reality it began four decades and two generations ago when my uncle died in Vietnam.

I felt so much pride, so much love. You get a handful of days like this in a lifetime. Take in every minute. They’ll be over soon enough, and you never know what tomorrow will bring.

A son for a flag is a lot of sacrifice.

The meeting began well, meaning it had the potential for being short.

I felt like I should salute. If only I knew how.

Military life is hard, even cruel—especially for the kids.

We all lose people. We all have to live in the aftermath. It’s how we move forward that counts, but sometimes we are tethered to something in our past that won’t let us move forward.

This is who I was, before I was dead. When I cared, when I was relentless.

I stood with my mom in the cemetery. She felt terrible pain. My grandmother is with God. My mom has to continue living. It’s not so easy, moving forward.

I think the way the sun shines on you has nothing to do with the sun but everything to do with you.

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.

Wish for what you want.

The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.

At the moment I'm doing this space movie, so I'm obsessed with physics and space travel. I know three months down the line it's gone. Then I'll be able to superficially say stuff about space.

In a high school, the norms act to hold down the achievements of those who are above average, so that the school's demands will be at a level easily maintained by the majority.

I had great difficulty in school interacting with others, and I took refuge in the contrived setting of play acting, which is what I still do.

That first bass I had was an Eko, a very old thing with a thin neck, I had that for quite a while.

Our desire to conform is greater than our respect for objective facts.

I love road trips, I love driving, I love finding little towns. I just think it's the best way to travel.